Please see the official WordPress documentation on the Dashboard Screen and what you’ll see at first glance in your WP dashboard. You will likely spend the most time in Pages or Posts either editing existing content or creating new content.
The fastest way to access your WordPress dashboard is to navigate to your site and add a /wp-admin to the end of the URL. For example, if your site URL is: my-cool-site.sites.marsal.umich.edu then your dashboard link would be my-cool-site.sites.marsal.umich.edu/wp-admin.
In our multisite network there are a couple of things that you won’t see listed in your dashboard.
Themes and Plugins are managed at the network level and the list will not appear in the dashboard. If you need a plugin activated you can email [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help. If you need to switch to a new theme you can use the customizer.